I write in a bubble

[NickiC]

So many here write so beautifully. Lurker. I can't read other writers when I write because I am afraid to be a thief and I don't read when I try to write. Does anyone else do this?

 

[RoyceConnors]

I haven't read a book or anything other Lit authors work in 8 yrs. Once I found my own style that worked, I didn't want to taint it with anything of anyone else's. I stay true to my style and hope to become good enough to be known by it.

If I'm not in a writing mode, I don't mind reading other's work, which is never in a genre I write in.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Yeah, I don't read when I'm writing either...don't what to clutter my mind with others words and ideas. I like my own ideas and want them the be my own.

 

[glynndah]

I don't have any trouble with my writing style when I read other writers. However, I do have trouble with taking time out from reading to do my own writing.

Oh, and I always write in a bubble.

A from the good little witch.

 

[PayDay]

So many here write so beautifully. Lurker. I can't read other writers when I write because I am afraid to be a thief and I don't read when I try to write. Does anyone else do this?

Most stories on this site are about sex, and there are only so many ways to write/explain the act of humping.

I wouldn't worry about stealing an idea or a context, as there is nothing wrong with being influenced by other writers. I tend to write a story from start to finish with music and movies playing in the background.

Here's some perspective:
Not theft, influenced:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003023.html

Certainly (if I may break a lifelong rule by understating a little), Dan is not a master of of fine English prose. Nonetheless, his plots barrel along nice and fast (the whole of the action always takes place within a 24-hour span), and though they may range between the mildly implausible and the utterly incredible, he hasn't been ripping his ideas off from second-rate pseudohistorical books about Jesus. He*; he doesn't rip it off. Unreliable as the research underlying his books often is, I have no doubt that it is honestly done by Dan and his wife.

Baigent and Leigh's may be madly jealous that Dan made a multi-hyper-megaseller out of some shreds of speculative history of theirs and others', but that doesn't mean Dan's reading of their sloppy myth-making book amounts to anything like grounds for a plagiarism case.

Statistically, you can't write the same as someone else even if you wanted to, unless you go out of your way to do so:
(I mean you could accidentally'd it, but even then it would be your context)
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/myl/languagelog/archives/003066.html

PROBABILITY THEORY AND VISWANATHAN'S PLAGIARISM

I have*recently mentioned*just how much undergraduate plagiarism disgusts me, and I will not repeat any of those remarks in the context of 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate*Kaavya Viswanathan's debut novel*How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, now widely known to have included passages plagiarized from Megan McCafferty's*Sloppy Firsts*(2001). But let me just point out that at least one of the plagiarized passages was 14 words long.

That may seem short to you, but according to modern estimates of the entropy in ordinary running English text [thanks to Fernando Pereira for information that led me to revised this post on April 26], if you graph the word positions in English text against the number of words that would be grammatically possible as the next word given the last few words of the text, although the numbers vacillate wildly, the average across them all tends to settle in at something approaching 100. If that's right, then at any arbitrary starting point in an arbitrary text, if text was being composed at random, the probability that you will find the next 14 words match some previously designated sequence of 14 words is very roughly in the region of 1 in 1028, i.e., 0.0000000000000000000000000001.

That number is so close to zero that we don't really need to ask any more. This is evidence of copying. And when there are*a dozen other cases of plagiarism from the same source, as the*The Harvard Crimson*has shown there are, the probability plummets to something vastly lower. One could quibble with some of the assumptions behind the application of probability theory here (I'm assuming a novelist is free to choose each word independently from all the grammatically legitimate ones available at that point), but it won't really change the fact that the chances of this being accidental are not just small but nonexistent.

Burn that bubble

 

[SamScribble]

When I'm writing, I tend to avoid reading from the same category that I'm writing in. So if I'm writing a short story (erotic or otherwise), I'll generally try to avoid reading other shorts stories. Poetry and non-fiction are always a good standby.

 

[ukstockinglvr]

I avoid the story side of the site, apart from some of the great essays I refer to when I get stuck. I do not read other stories in case I inadvertently pinch ideas!

I write with lights out and relaxing music. Trying to avoid as many distractions as possible

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I generally read 4 books at a time, and almost never read LIT stories unless someone wants an opinion. I steal liberally from what I read, reading is a goldmine full of vocabulary and better ways of depicting and explaining things. I mean, Mozart invented Sonata form composition, and everyone since then uses it. Henry Ford invented the assembly line and everyone uses it....just don't build a Pinto or Escort with it.

 

[oggbashan]

When I'm actually writing I'm in a bubble too.

Anything and everything outside the particular story is irrelevant, at worst I can even ignore my hungry stomach and full bladder.

But when I'm reading, plot bunnies breed everywhere and hop around my study. 'What if?' can damage my reading enjoyment. Some many stories depend on a particular development or incident. What if that development went another way? Or that incident was different?

If I read a simple boy meets girl story I can end up with dozens of variations. I have even done it formally almost like composers producing 'Variations on a theme of Paganini' but the only one posted is the incomplete story Christmas Fairy based on The Bridge by Piers Anthony.

 

[lovecraft68]

Good thread.

I told a lit member a few months ago that it seems like since I have been writing I not only don't read the way I used to, but sometimes can't, its as if I can no longer focus on words that aren't my own, like I exchanged writing for reading.

I agree that it can mess with me to read other stories when I'm writing because I don't want to get caught up in wow, they're so much better, or look at how they did that I should do that and on the other side the false confidence of I'm way better than that or what are they thinking.

I read two contest stories this Halloween one more than I read for Summer and two more than I read at nude day. Its not that I don't want to check out what my friends here are doing, its just I find I can't without making a concerted effort that's close to a struggle

 

[Sammael Bard]

Reading other's work gives the inspiration to write/continue my own work. The scenes that are conjured into my mind are definitely my own and in the context to my own story, and not someone else's. I don't stop reading, otherwise I end up with a temporary writer's block.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

I haven't read a book or anything other Lit authors work in 8 yrs. Once I found my own style that worked, I didn't want to taint it with anything of anyone else's. I stay true to my style and hope to become good enough to be known by it.

If I'm not in a writing mode, I don't mind reading other's work, which is never in a genre I write in.

I tend to write like the author I'm reading. IRL, I'm prone to picking up the accent of people near me. Guess something similar happens when I'm reading/writing.

 

[Vanadorn]

I read terribly fast and am a voracious reader - often having 2 or three books running at a given time plus whatever I run across on here or other sites I glance at.

I've have my own "writing" voice for decades and find that I don't pick up others tones or tenors when I'm writing.

My writing problem is that when I write - I write constantly until the tank runs out of gas, and then I just file away ideas until the tank is full again - and then it's write write write.

-V

 

[sr71plt]

One of the reasons I don't read much here falls in with what the OP posted--I don't want my story ideas for here (although there's very little that original) to inadvertently be rip offs of what I've read here. So much of my writing inspiration does come from bits and pieces of what I'm picking up from "wherever."

I think it's legitimate to write here without reading here--they are separate functions and interests--as long as you don't expect others to be doing what you aren't doing.

 

[Swilly]

I generally either read or write, but not both. It isn't that I feel reading will alter what I write. My issue is more about time. If I want to write, I devote me free time to that. When I'm finished, I'll read some until the urge to write hits again.

Most of my ideas come from something I see or hear in real life, and they grow from there.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

I go through periods of intense writing and no reading whatsoever followed by periods of casual reading and no writing. I only have a few hours a day to write, and when I'm in that mode I don't have time to read.

I also avoid reading so that I don't inadvertently pick up any inspiration from other stories. The last thing I would ever want to do is borrow ideas from another Lit. author.

That being said, overlap of ideas is almost unavoidable. Around this time last year I was finishing chapter 3 of a story and waiting for my editor to return chapters 1 and 2. While skimming the new story lists I found a title followed by a tagline that perfectly described my story. I clicked on the story and found that the concept was nearly identical, although the execution and outcome differed substantially. I felt compelled to write to the author and advise him that my story was coming down the pipe and it had a remarkably similar concept.

Even when we try to insulate ourselves from outside influences, there is no guarantee that someone else isn't thinking of the same thing at the same time.

 

[sr71plt]

Even when we try to insulate ourselves from outside influences, there is no guarantee that someone else isn't thinking of the same thing at the same time.

Undoubtedly they are. We can't avoid sharing inspirations--from the news, from TV shows and movies, etc. And I have two or three books going at the same time from which I get inspiration. They aren't erotica, though, and they tend not to be current books. In both books and movies, I tend to pick them up years after release. Some TV programs I even watch years later on DVD. But stimulii for inspiration come as they come; it's difficult to control them.

 

[Over_Red]

Generally I don't read full length novels. But literotica stories, other shorts, anime and manga - I readily consume those as I write. They're bite-sized, so I can keep my main attention on what I'm writing. They make good breaks!

And what I read absolutely influences what I write. Even though I'm not reading any novels at the moment, I can see the bleed-in from the last big books I've read. I always wonder what my stories would be like if they contained X character or Y plot device. A lot of times, it's totally unintentional - often only later, in rereading, do I say to myself, "huh, that was a lot like this other thing I read...guess that's where my brain picked it from."

I think it's silly in worrying about trying to be completely original. There is nothing new under the sun. Rather, I think it's more important to put your own unique stamp on what you love.

"The originality we ask of the artist is the originality of treatment, not of subject. It is only the unimaginative who ever invent. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything." - Oscar Wilde

 

[Beatnic_jazzman]

I've rather

Lost the itch to read other stories whilst I'm knee deep writing mine. I will read a short out of genre story while tossing around for inspiration, but not much more than that.

 

[CeasarBoobage]

Most stories on this site are about sex, and there are only so many ways to write/explain the act of humping.

I wouldn't worry about stealing an idea or a context, as there is nothing wrong with being influenced by other writers. I tend to write a story from start to finish with music and movies playing in the background.

Cutting out the cool quotes only to save space (for my wandering mind to fill)

I usually can't finish a story in one sitting, or even a week in most cases, but I have no problem reading other people's work while my stories are in progress. I actively try to not borrow scenes from other authors, but ideas, feelings, and interactions are fair game, at least in the way I interpret them.

Like PAYDAY says above, there are some limits we can't escape.
This site hosts sex stories.
There are 26 letters in the alphabet I use, making up standard words found in the dictionary.
There are known and limited appendages and openings on a human body, and a limited number of ways to join them.
There are only so many ways to vocalize.

With that being said, there are bound to be instances where one author duplicates another in some way, even when purely unintentional. I don't want to use another author's work as my own, I have my own style. Sometimes I'm influenced by another, but I won't copy. The closest I will get is to use one or two specific words that fit the scene when my words don't do justice to the situation.

 

[pbbj]

I don't really have any problems reading other stories while I'm writing. Except that I'd rather not read it in the middle of writing. It's got to be a while before or after.

I'm not that worried about copying other peoples style since I feel like my ideas overarching are mine.